Not gonna lie, this one fucking stings. It stings a lot. It doesn’t matter what you feel about Reid Detmers now or what you thought about him in July and August, because you’ll be wondering what if after seeing how close the Chicago Cubs were to trading for a left-handed starting pitcher at the trade deadline. Sure, maybe he wouldn’t have pitched to the same level in Chicago, under more pressure with a playoff team, but we’ll never know for sure, and maybe he would have been just as great, and man, was he great after the trade deadline.
Arizona Phil from The Cub Reporter filled us in on how close the Cubs were to trading for Detmers, as the deal seemed done before the Angels backed out at the last minute over medical concerns about one of the prospects going to Los Angeles. As you’ll remember, the Cubs and Angels did work out a deal, as Moises Ballesteros and pitching prospect Mason McGwire were traded for right-handed relief pitcher Ryan Zeferjahn.
Well, originally, it was going to be a four-for-two trade, with the Cubs acquiring Detmers and Zeferjahn for Ballesteros, McGwire, Jefferson Rojas, and Jaxon Wiggins. The Angels rejected the proposed trade because of Wiggins.
Via The Cub Reporter.
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What I heard from two different sources is that there was indeed a deal in place for Reid Detmers at the Trade Deadline with the Cubs having OK’d his medicals, but then the Angels unexpectedly rejected the medicals on Jaxon Wiggins and did not wish to substitute a different Cubs pitching prospect for Wiggins, and so the deal (which was supposed to be a four-for-two trade) fell through before it was officially consummated.
There was supposedly another position player in the original deal (believed to be Jefferson Rojas, because it was definitely NOT Josiah Hartshorn or Owen Ayers), as well as what turned out to be a second section of the trade (Moises Ballesteros and Mason McGwire for Ryan Zeferjahn) that was completed.
Coincidentally, the New York Mets had a deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks that would have sent Clay Holmes to Arizona in exchange for a prospect, whom the Mets ultimately were not 100% on after reviewing his medical records. The deal fell apart, and the Cubs and Mets worked out a trade: Rojas for Holmes.
After the trade deadline, Detmers became one of MLB’s best starting pitchers. The left-hander posted a 1.95 ERA in 60 innings and a 29.1 K% rate. Meanwhile, Holmes was a disaster down the stretch, and although he made the Wild Card roster, the Cubs didn’t use him against the San Diego Padres. After the year ended abruptly, Hoyer pretty much admitted that Holmes wasn’t seriously considered to pitch in either of the first two games because of how bad he was to end the regular season.
So, one last gut punch as the 2026 MLB season nears its end for Cubs fans. Not only was Detmers a beast in the final two months of the year, but he is also still under team control for two more years at a very low cost relative to his production.
Now, the Cubs are under pressure not only to spend or acquire multiple starting pitchers in the offseason, but also not to miss on any of them, or they’ll be right back where they were in 2026. Having Detmers already in the rotation would have made a massive difference for this team. Fuck.
Injuries. Screwed the Cubs all season long; even as they were about to address their biggest problem, Wiggins’ uncertain health came back to haunt them.
One last thing, now we know why Bleacher Nation’s Michael Cerami was so confident in his reporting that the Cubs were trading for Detmers. The deal was done- well, pretty much done, as we now know.
